WWTBAM Bored

If you practice appellate law, what order would the following choices need to be accessed ?
(Note: Written decisions and opinions are not among the choices)

The Record on Appeal
The Briefs in a case with an unsigned opinion
The briefs in a case with a signed, unanimous opinion
The briefs in a signed split decision
The briefs in a case returning the case to the court of original jurisdiction
The briefs in a case overturning the lower court, resultant in a final disposition.

To a lay person, the answer may seem fairly obvious, but I know that may not be the case.

How often do records on appeal need to be accessed?

I hate pop up e-mail notifications (resulted in the ESSTisms mini mentioned)

I need the above to reinforce my position on a project that currently is vastly understaffed, and looks to occupy 4-6 terabytes of server space.

It's in Lawyerese AND ESSTese. I'm scratching my head.

minimetoo26 wrote:It's in Lawyerese AND ESSTese. I'm scratching my head.

I think it's about underwear....

lb13

littlebeast13 wrote:

minimetoo26 wrote:It's in Lawyerese AND ESSTese. I'm scratching my head.

I think it's about underwear....

lb13

Listen buddy boy -

You almost got that underwear sent to you to place under your Snippet tree, so tread lightly.

The briefs in a case with a signed, unanimous opinion
The briefs in a signed split decision
The briefs in a case overturning the lower court, resultant in a final disposition
The briefs in a case returning the case to the court of original jurisdiction
The Briefs in a case with an unsigned opinion
The Record on Appeal

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:The briefs in a case with a signed, unanimous opinion
The briefs in a signed split decision
The briefs in a case overturning the lower court, resultant in a final disposition
The briefs in a case returning the case to the court of original jurisdiction
The Briefs in a case with an unsigned opinion
The Record on Appeal

Thank you, sir.

eyégor wrote:If you practice appellate law, what order would the following choices need to be accessed ?
(Note: Written decisions and opinions are not among the choices)

The Record on Appeal
The Briefs in a case with an unsigned opinion
The briefs in a case with a signed, unanimous opinion
The briefs in a signed split decision
The briefs in a case returning the case to the court of original jurisdiction
The briefs in a case overturning the lower court, resultant in a final disposition.

To a lay person, the answer may seem fairly obvious, but I know that may not be the case.

How often do records on appeal need to be accessed?

I hate pop up e-mail notifications (resulted in the ESSTisms mini mentioned)

Are you talking about the lawyers on that case, or the lawyers (or anyone else) on some other case that might want to reference the various materials you're talking about? I assume the latter.

I practice a fair amount of appellate law, and I almost never use any of that stuff. I can only envision using any of it in a couple of circumstances -- (1) when I need to make a res judicata argument and therefore need to investigate precisely what was argued in the earlier decision, or (2) when I want to argue judicial estoppel and therefore need to prove that the other side took precisely the opposite position from the position they're taking in my case.

Of course, it matters a lot that I practice in California. There really aren't very many issues that haven't been thoroughly addressed by published appellate decisions. I've done a little poking around in New York, and discovered that the law is not quite so "thick" there (probably because many appellate cases are resolved by summary decisions), so it might be that briefs are sometimes useful to come up with arguments that one might not otherwise have thought of. It would have to be a pretty big case (probably at least ten million dollars at stake), though, before I'd spend the attorney time to try to find such things. --Bob

Bob78164 wrote:Are you talking about the lawyers on that case, or the lawyers (or anyone else) on some other case that might want to reference the various materials you're talking about? I assume the latter.

I practice a fair amount of appellate law, and I almost never use any of that stuff. I can only envision using any of it in a couple of circumstances -- (1) when I need to make a res judicata argument and therefore need to investigate precisely what was argued in the earlier decision, or (2) when I want to argue judicial estoppel and therefore need to prove that the other side took precisely the opposite position from the position they're taking in my case.

Of course, it matters a lot that I practice in California. There really aren't very many issues that haven't been thoroughly addressed by published appellate decisions. I've done a little poking around in New York, and discovered that the law is not quite so "thick" there (probably because many appellate cases are resolved by summary decisions), so it might be that briefs are sometimes useful to come up with arguments that one might not otherwise have thought of. It would have to be a pretty big case (probably at least ten million dollars at stake), though, before I'd spend the attorney time to try to find such things. --Bob

I am overseeing a project to digitize all intermediate appellate Records & Briefs from 1983-2005, less those records that cannot legally be made public . These records are currently on microfiche. Mountains of microfiche. When I took over, the cases were being processed in order, the entire record, with no regard for possible demand. While we know there is virtually no demand for this information, this is my boss's pet project. I am trying to bring any relevance to this that I can, but the appellate court is the only one where I don't have any administrative experience. I appreciate any help with this I can get. She is a tough sell on anything, given that she usually just talks louder if you are saying something she doesn't agree with.

eyégor wrote:

Bob78164 wrote:Are you talking about the lawyers on that case, or the lawyers (or anyone else) on some other case that might want to reference the various materials you're talking about? I assume the latter.

I practice a fair amount of appellate law, and I almost never use any of that stuff. I can only envision using any of it in a couple of circumstances -- (1) when I need to make a res judicata argument and therefore need to investigate precisely what was argued in the earlier decision, or (2) when I want to argue judicial estoppel and therefore need to prove that the other side took precisely the opposite position from the position they're taking in my case.

Of course, it matters a lot that I practice in California. There really aren't very many issues that haven't been thoroughly addressed by published appellate decisions. I've done a little poking around in New York, and discovered that the law is not quite so "thick" there (probably because many appellate cases are resolved by summary decisions), so it might be that briefs are sometimes useful to come up with arguments that one might not otherwise have thought of. It would have to be a pretty big case (probably at least ten million dollars at stake), though, before I'd spend the attorney time to try to find such things. --Bob

I am overseeing a project to digitize all intermediate appellate Records & Briefs from 1983-2005, less those records that cannot legally be made public . These records are currently on microfiche. Mountains of microfiche. When I took over, the cases were being processed in order, the entire record, with no regard for possible demand. While we know there is virtually no demand for this information, this is my boss's pet project. I am trying to bring any relevance to this that I can, but the appellate court is the only one where I don't have any administrative experience. I appreciate any help with this I can get. She is a tough sell on anything, given that she usually just talks louder if you are saying something she doesn't agree with.

If the material were digitized and readily available (meaning some sort of effective search function that permits me to locate cases by party and by attorney), I could see using briefs to do opposition research. I doubt that the type of opinion would matter to me. I agree with suitguy that I'm more likely to be interested in the briefs than in the record -- after all, the intended purpose of the briefs is to focus the court on the portions of the record that actually matter. --Bob

Bob78164 wrote:

eyégor wrote:

Bob78164 wrote:Are you talking about the lawyers on that case, or the lawyers (or anyone else) on some other case that might want to reference the various materials you're talking about? I assume the latter.

I practice a fair amount of appellate law, and I almost never use any of that stuff. I can only envision using any of it in a couple of circumstances -- (1) when I need to make a res judicata argument and therefore need to investigate precisely what was argued in the earlier decision, or (2) when I want to argue judicial estoppel and therefore need to prove that the other side took precisely the opposite position from the position they're taking in my case.

Of course, it matters a lot that I practice in California. There really aren't very many issues that haven't been thoroughly addressed by published appellate decisions. I've done a little poking around in New York, and discovered that the law is not quite so "thick" there (probably because many appellate cases are resolved by summary decisions), so it might be that briefs are sometimes useful to come up with arguments that one might not otherwise have thought of. It would have to be a pretty big case (probably at least ten million dollars at stake), though, before I'd spend the attorney time to try to find such things. --Bob

I am overseeing a project to digitize all intermediate appellate Records & Briefs from 1983-2005, less those records that cannot legally be made public . These records are currently on microfiche. Mountains of microfiche. When I took over, the cases were being processed in order, the entire record, with no regard for possible demand. While we know there is virtually no demand for this information, this is my boss's pet project. I am trying to bring any relevance to this that I can, but the appellate court is the only one where I don't have any administrative experience. I appreciate any help with this I can get. She is a tough sell on anything, given that she usually just talks louder if you are saying something she doesn't agree with.

If the material were digitized and readily available (meaning some sort of effective search function that permits me to locate cases by party and by attorney), I could see using briefs to do opposition research. I doubt that the type of opinion would matter to me. I agree with suitguy that I'm more likely to be interested in the briefs than in the record -- after all, the intended purpose of the briefs is to focus the court on the portions of the record that actually matter. --Bob

If I can make the case for doing the briefs first, and supplying the records only on demand, I can increase production tenfold, minimum. We have cases indexed by citation, case #, fiche ID and caption. The paper indexes that were our source material did not include counsel, so that may not be feasable. I need to check how many fields are still available in the database. The system she bought for this is a real pig.

eyégor wrote:

Bob78164 wrote:Are you talking about the lawyers on that case, or the lawyers (or anyone else) on some other case that might want to reference the various materials you're talking about? I assume the latter.

I practice a fair amount of appellate law, and I almost never use any of that stuff. I can only envision using any of it in a couple of circumstances -- (1) when I need to make a res judicata argument and therefore need to investigate precisely what was argued in the earlier decision, or (2) when I want to argue judicial estoppel and therefore need to prove that the other side took precisely the opposite position from the position they're taking in my case.

Of course, it matters a lot that I practice in California. There really aren't very many issues that haven't been thoroughly addressed by published appellate decisions. I've done a little poking around in New York, and discovered that the law is not quite so "thick" there (probably because many appellate cases are resolved by summary decisions), so it might be that briefs are sometimes useful to come up with arguments that one might not otherwise have thought of. It would have to be a pretty big case (probably at least ten million dollars at stake), though, before I'd spend the attorney time to try to find such things. --Bob

I am overseeing a project to digitize all intermediate appellate Records & Briefs from 1983-2005, less those records that cannot legally be made public . These records are currently on microfiche. Mountains of microfiche. When I took over, the cases were being processed in order, the entire record, with no regard for possible demand. While we know there is virtually no demand for this information, this is my boss's pet project. I am trying to bring any relevance to this that I can, but the appellate court is the only one where I don't have any administrative experience. I appreciate any help with this I can get. She is a tough sell on anything, given that she usually just talks louder if you are saying something she doesn't agree with.

Hurray for you. The more stuff that is digitized, the easier my life is.

I'm not sure I have an opinion on which of those is more likely to be used. As librarians we get asked about all kinds of stuff but usually the law clerks want either some specific document or everything to do with a particular case. I'll ask the other librarians, who have a lot more experience, tomorrow and see if they have an opinion.

andrewjackson wrote:
Hurray for you. The more stuff that is digitized, the easier my life is.

I'm not sure I have an opinion on which of those is more likely to be used. As librarians we get asked about all kinds of stuff but usually the law clerks want either some specific document or everything to do with a particular case. I'll ask the other librarians, who have a lot more experience, tomorrow and see if they have an opinion.

I wish you could talk to our librarians. They still fight anything digital. We are migrating to a new system in a couple of months, and we have over 600,000 call numbers that are useless. But they are 'too busy' to fix them. My favorite? "Against-the-wall-under-the-clock" I kid you not. One who just retired claimed that pdfs were to complicated for her. A few years ago we went to one of our largest libraries for training, but we had to wait until they finished cooking & eating breakfast to start. Didn't even offer to share.

eyégor wrote:

andrewjackson wrote:
Hurray for you. The more stuff that is digitized, the easier my life is.

I'm not sure I have an opinion on which of those is more likely to be used. As librarians we get asked about all kinds of stuff but usually the law clerks want either some specific document or everything to do with a particular case. I'll ask the other librarians, who have a lot more experience, tomorrow and see if they have an opinion.

I wish you could talk to our librarians. They still fight anything digital. We are migrating to a new system in a couple of months, and we have over 600,000 call numbers that are useless. But they are 'too busy' to fix them. My favorite? "Against-the-wall-under-the-clock" I kid you not. One who just retired claimed that pdfs were to complicated for her. A few years ago we went to one of our largest libraries for training, but we had to wait until they finished cooking & eating breakfast to start. Didn't even offer to share.

Hmmm. Very strange in my experience with librarians but I suppose they are out there. People do get set in their ways. That's one reason why we have a lot of the books that we have; the judges like the books better than digital. So we have books.

I asked around about your list of case types. The general consensus here is that we are not sure what types of cases get the most requests for briefs. That's probably not very helpful but that's all I've got.

eyégor wrote:

andrewjackson wrote:
Hurray for you. The more stuff that is digitized, the easier my life is.

I'm not sure I have an opinion on which of those is more likely to be used. As librarians we get asked about all kinds of stuff but usually the law clerks want either some specific document or everything to do with a particular case. I'll ask the other librarians, who have a lot more experience, tomorrow and see if they have an opinion.

I wish you could talk to our librarians. They still fight anything digital. We are migrating to a new system in a couple of months, and we have over 600,000 call numbers that are useless. But they are 'too busy' to fix them. My favorite? "Against-the-wall-under-the-clock" I kid you not. One who just retired claimed that pdfs were to complicated for her. A few years ago we went to one of our largest libraries for training, but we had to wait until they finished cooking & eating breakfast to start. Didn't even offer to share.

Where was DevilKitty when you needed her?